Federal judge blocks Tennessee's law preventing schools from issuing mask mandates - Tennessean
A federal judge in Nashville on Friday temporarily blocked Tennessee from preventing schools from issuing mask mandates and from stripping local health and school officials of their ability to set COVID-19 quarantine policies.
U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw issued the 54-page ruling on a motion to block the law after the parents of students with disabilities in Tennessee schools filed a lawsuit last month against the new law.
Crenshaw wrote that it is in the "public’s interest to slow the spread of COVID-19 in Tennessee’s schools."
"Defendants have proffered absolutely nothing to suggest that any harm would come from allowing individual school districts to determine what is best for their schools, just as they did prior to the enactment" of the new state law, Crenshaw said.
Gov. Bill Lee signed a comprehensive legislative package, passed in the dead of night during a late October special session, aimed to curtailing the power local agencies have over COVID-19 restrictions. He also ended the COVID-19 state of emergency in Tennessee.
The new law prevented local governments and schools from issuing mask mandates except in the most dire circumstances. It also gives the state health commissioner the sole authority to implement quarantine policies.
Eight Tennessee children, via their parents, sued Lee and Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn under the new law in November, just after the governor signed it. They argue the restrictions violate their children's rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Crenshaw wrote that the families "have shown more than a mere probability of success on their ADA" and other claims.
"Because state law must yield to federal law when they conflict, they have established an overall likelihood of success on the merits," the judge wrote in his ruling.
Although he has urged people to wear masks, Lee's stance on mandates has been clear. He signed the new law on the heels of an executive order allowing parents statewide to opt their children out of any such mandate at their schools.
Lee has rescinded the mask order but it had already been blocked in three counties by three separate federal judges, including Crenshaw, based on similar ADA arguments.
The state disagrees that the law creates any unnecessary burden and dances away from the claim they're barring ADA-compliance. That's a decision of the individual principal, they say in court filings.
Much of the arguments around the push for a preliminary injunction have so far followed previous lines that were successful in convincing Crenshaw and other judges to block the executive order.
New issues around a potential threat to federal funding if allowed to go into effect have been raised.
"Defense counsel have their duties, Plaintiffs understand that, but one must not pretend this is a narrow law extended in harmony with Plaintiffs’ federal statutory rights. The new state law was created to condemn and obstruct the very federal laws to which Plaintiffs have successfully resorted," the students' attorneys said.
The state has argued the students and their representatives are misinterpreting the law, which they say still gives leeway to schools to make health care decisions.
"Yet the injunction they propose is against the Act of their imagination, not as enacted," the attorney general's office noted in post-hearing briefings.
The students disagree.
"Defendants ask for a 'wait and see' approach, as if Plaintiffs cannot read the law and its impending doom now," attorneys wrote.
This is a developing story.
source: https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2021/12/10/federal-judge-blocks-tennessee-law-preventing-schools-issuing-mask-mandates/8800549002/
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